Back when I was a fledgling middle school trumpet player, we were assigned to play scales for 30 minutes a day. Nuts to that, and I rarely (if ever) did it. Instead, I learned to pick out by ear my favorite tunes, TV theme songs from my favorite shows, church songs, etc. In other words I turned it into fun and interesting exercises. Scales are like reading the dictionary. Thorough and systematic (technically it's all in there) but not as interesting as reading a good novel. Put another way, you can play tennis (fun) or you can do calisthenics like push-ups and jumping jacks, which are fine for conditioning but not nearly as much fun. Having fun helps you engage and make far more progress in the long run. While I still don't read music notation as well as I probably should, I can play much by ear on several instruments.
